The City of Edinburgh will be the first to host an international promotion event of Rotterdam's innovative cultural policies for enforcing the participation of artists in heightening a city's competitiveness and securing social peace on the local level.

The essay 'Neo-Liberalism with Dutch Characteristics: The Big Fix-Up of the Netherlands and the Practice of Embedded Cultural Activism' is published in the book volume 'Culture and Contestation in the New Century'.

Read more about the Kanunnik Triest Square (designed by architects De Vylder Vinck Taillieu) in the Caritas psychiatric centre (Melle) and how it results from a participative process with psychiatrists, managers, staff, and patients.

Can a ‘politics of statement’ (a title that consolidates Chto Delat?’s project in its entirety) be developed instead of endless critical engagement? The exhibition “From the Relative Truth to the Absolute Error” by the Argentinian collective Etcetera… is the concluding contingent of the Statement exhibition by Chto Delat?. Both collectives share common ground in their approach to political issues based on theatricality, estrangement, humor and self-irony. They also carry with them a profound responsibility embedded in local and international activist politics. Gideon Boie [* BAVO] frames this artistic statement created from the periphery of global affairs and mediates this with a local Dutch experience set against the backdrop of political and social economy.

Residing passionately over their practice and institutional participation, the most acute question for both collectives is how to love art while not betraying political commitment through exposure of political issues in the form of artistic display. The discussion focuses on creative practices which make sense and that have political relevance. How can these artists make political enunciations and not be compromised by the institutional framework desiring this special space for ideological struggle?

BAVO is an independent research and activism office focused on the political dimension of art, architecture and planning. The office is headed by architect-philosophers Gideon Boie (Bruges, 1975) and Matthias Pauwels (Bruges, 1975), was founded in 2002 and is based in Rotterdam, Brussels and Pretoria.